| <The Saturday Review, December 28, 1867>
| <republished in Modern Women and What is Said of 
| them>
| <New York 1868>
| <Platonic Woman>
| <pb n="206">
| In the wearier hours of life, when the season is over, and 
| the boredom of country visits is beginning to tell on the 
| hardy constitutions that have weathered out crush and
| ball-room, there is usually a moment when the heroine of 
| twenty summers bemoans the hardships of her lot.  Her 
| brother snuffed her out yesterday when she tried politics, 
| and the clerical uncle who comes in with the vacation 
| extinguished a well-meant attempt at theology by a vague 
| but severe reference to the Fathers.  If the afternoon is 
| particularly rainy, and Mudie's box is exhausted, the 
| sufferer possibly goes further, and rises into eloquent revolt 
| against the decorums of life.
| There is indeed one career left to woman, but a general 
| looseness of grammar, and a conscious insecurity in the 
| matter of spelling, stand in the way of literary expression of 
| the burning thoughts within her.  All she can do is to moan 
| over her lot and to take refuge in the works of Miss 
| Hominy.  There she learns the great theory of the equality 
| of the sexes, the advancement of woman and the tyranny of 
| man.  If her head doesn't ache, and holds out for a few 
| pages more, she is comforted to find that her aspirations 
| have a philosophic character.  She is able
| <pb n="207">
| to tell the heavy Guardsman who takes her down to dinner 
| and parries her observations with a joke that they have the 
| sanction of the deepest of Athenian thinkers.
| It is, we suppose, necessary that woman should have her 
| philosopher, but it must be owned that she has made an odd 
| choice in Plato.  <reg orig="No one"> No-one </reg> 
| would be more astonished than the severe dialectician of 
| the Academy at the feminine conception of a sage of 
| dreamy and poetic temperament, who spends half his time 
| in asserting woman's rights, and half in inventing a peculiar 
| species of flirtation.  Platonic attachments, whatever their 
| real origin may be, will scarcely be traced in the pages of 
| Plato; and the rights of woman, as they are advocated in the 
| Republic, are sadly deficient in the essential points of free 
| love and elective affinity.
| The appearance of a real Platonic woman in the midst of a 
| caucus of such female agitators as those who were lately 
| engaged in stumping with singular ill success the American 
| States of the West would, we imagine, give a somewhat 
| novel turn to the discussion, and strip of a good deal of 
| adoring admiration the philosopher in whom strong-minded 
| woman has of late found a patron and friend.  Plato is a 
| little too logical and too fond of stating plain facts in plain 
| words to suit the Miss Hominys who would put the legs of 
| every pianoforte in petticoats, and if the Platonic woman 
| were to prove as outspoken as her inventor, the conference 
| would, we fear, come abruptly to an end.  But if once the 
| difficulty of decorum
| <pb n="208">
| could be got over, some instruction and no little amusement 
| might be derived from the inquiry which the discussion 
| would open, as to how far the modern attitude of woman 
| fulfils the dreams of her favorite philosopher.
| The institution of Ladies' Colleges is a sufficient proof that 
| woman has arrived at Plato's conception of an identity of 
| education for the two sexes.  Professors, lecturers 
| class-rooms, note-books, the whole machinery of University 
| teaching, is at her disposal.  Logic and the long-envied 
| classics are in the curriculum.  Governesses are abolished, 
| and the fair girl-graduates may listen to the sterner 
| teachings of academical tutors.  It is amusing to see how 
| utterly discomfited the new Professor generally is when he 
| comes in sight of his class.  He feels that he must be 
| interesting, but he is haunted above all with the sense that 
| he must be proper.  He remembers that when, in reply to 
| the lady-principal's inquiry how he liked his class, he 
| answered, with the strictest intellectual reference, that they 
| were <p> "charming," </p> the stern matron suggested that another 
| adjective would perhaps be more appropriate.  He felt his 
| whole moral sense as a teacher ebbing away.
| In the case of men he would insist on a thorough treatment 
| of his subject, and would avoid sentiment and personal 
| details as insults to their intelligence; but what is he to do 
| with rows of pretty faces that grow black as he touches 
| upon the dialect of Socrates, but kindle into life and 
| animation when he depicts the sage's snub nose?  
| Anecdotes, pretty stories,
| <pb n="209">
| snatches of poetical quotation, slip in more and more as the 
| students perceive and exercise their power.  Men, too, are 
| either intelligent or unintelligent, but the unhappy Professor 
| at a Ladies' College soon perceives that he has to deal with 
| a class of minds which are both at once.  A luckless 
| gentleman, after lecturing for forty minutes, found that the 
| lecture had been most carefully listened to and reproduced 
| in the note-books, but with the trifling substitution in every 
| instance of the word "Phoenician" for "Venetian."  Above 
| all, he is puzzled with the profuse employment of these 
| note-books.
| To the Platonic girl her note-book takes the place of the 
| old-fashioned diary.  It is scribbled down roughly at the 
| lecture and copied out fairly at night. It used to be a 
| frightful thought that every evening, before retiring to rest, 
| the girl with whom one had been chatting intended 
| seriously to probe the state of her heart and set down her 
| affections in black and white; but it is hardly less 
| formidable to imagine her refusing to lay her head on her 
| pillow before she has finished her fair copy of the battle of 
| Salamis.  The universality of female studies, too, astounds 
| the teacher who is fresh from the world of man; he stands 
| aghast before a girl who is learning four languages at once, 
| besides attending courses on logic, music, and the use of 
| the globes.  This omnivorous appetite for knowledge he 
| finds to co-exist with a great weakness in the minor matters 
| of spelling, and a profound indifference to the simplest 
| rules of grammar.  We do not wonder than at Professors 
| being a
| <pb n="210">
| little shy of Ladies' Colleges; nor is it less easy to see why 
| the Platonic theory of education has taken so little with the 
| girls themselves.  After all, the grievance of which they 
| complain has its advantages.
| The worst of bores is restrained by courtesy from boring 
| you if you give him no cue for further conversation, and the 
| plea of utter ignorance which an English girl can 
| commonly advance on any subject is at any rate a defence 
| against the worst posts of society.  On the other hand, the 
| ingenuous confession that she really knows nothing about it 
| can be turned by a smile into a prelude to the most 
| engaging conversation, and into an implied flattery of the 
| neatest kind to the favored being whose superiority is 
| acknowledged.  Ignorance, in fact, of this winsome order is 
| one of the stock weapons of the feminine armory.
| The man who looks philosophically back after marriage to 
| discover why on earth he is married at all will generally 
| find that the mischief began in the <hi rend="italic"> naive 
| </hi> confession on the part of his future wife of a total 
| ignorance which asked humbly for enlightenment.  One of 
| the grandest <hi rend="italic"> coups </hi> we ever knew 
| made in this way was effected by a desire on the part of a 
| faded beauty to know the pedigree of a horse.  The pride of 
| her next neighbor at finding himself the possessor of 
| knowledge on any subject on earth took the form of the 
| most practical gratitude a man can show.  But it is not 
| before marriage only that woman finds her ignorance act as 
| a charm.  Husbands find pleasure in talking politics to their 
| wives simply because, as they stand on the hearthrug, they 
| are displaying
| <pb n=<"211">
| their own mental superiority.  An Englishman likes to be 
| master of his own house, but he dearly loves to be 
| schoolmaster.
| A Platonic woman as well-informed as her husband would 
| deprive him of this daily source of domestic enjoyment; his 
| lecture would be reduced to discussion, and to discussion in 
| which he might be defeated.  To rob him of his oracular 
| infallibility might greatly improve the husband, but it 
| would revolutionize the character of the home.
| It is difficult to see at first sight any analogy between the 
| Puritanical form of flirtation which calls itself a Platonic 
| attachment, and the provisions by which Plato excluded all 
| peculiar love or matrimonial choice from his 
| commonwealth.  The likeness is really to be found in the 
| resolve on which both are based to obtain all the 
| advantages of social intercourse between the sexes without 
| the interference of passion.  In a well-regulated State, no 
| doubt, passion is a bore, and this is just the aspect which it 
| takes to a highly regulated woman.  An outburst of 
| affection on the part of her numerous admirers would break 
| up a very pleasant circle, and put an end to some charming 
| conversations.  On the other hand, the quiet sense of some 
| special relationship, the faint odor of a passion carefully 
| sealed up, gives a piquancy and flavor to social friendship 
| which mere association wants.  Very frequently such a 
| relation forms an admirable retreat from stormier 
| experiences in the past, and the tender grace of a day that is 
| dead hangs pleasantly enough over the days that remain.
| <pb n="212">
| But the Platonic woman proper, in this sense, is the spinster 
| of five-and-thirty.  She is clever enough to know that the 
| day for inspiring grand passions is gone by, but that there is 
| still nothing ridiculous in mingling a little sentiment with 
| her friendly relations.  She moves in maiden meditation 
| fancy free, but the vestal flame of her life is none the more 
| sullied for a slight tinge of earthly color.  It is a connection 
| that is at once interesting, undefined, and perfectly safe. It 
| throws a little poetry over life to know that one being is 
| cherishing a perfectly moral and carefully toned-down 
| attachment for another, which will last for years, but never 
| exceed the bounds of a smile and a squeeze of the hand.
| Animals in the lowest scale of life are notoriously the 
| hardest to kill, and it is just this low vitality, as it were, of 
| Platonic attachment that makes it so perfectly 
| indestructible.  Its real use is in keeping up a sort of minute 
| irrigation of a good deal of human ground which would be 
| barren without it.  These little tricklings of affection, so 
| small as not to disturb one's sleep or to drive one to 
| compose a single sonnet, keep up a certain consciousness 
| of attraction, and beget a corresponding return of kindliness 
| and good temper towards the world around.  A woman who 
| has once given up the hope of being loved is a nuisance to 
| everybody.  But the Platonic woman need never give up her 
| hope of being loved; she has reduced affection to a 
| minimum, but from its very minuteness there is little or no 
| motive to snap the bond, and with time habit makes it 
| indestructible.
| <pb n="213">
| One Christian body, we believe ~~ the Moravians ~~ still 
| carries out the principle of Plato's ideal state in giving 
| woman no choice in the selection of a spouse.  The elders 
| arrange their matches as the wise men of the Republic were 
| wont to do.  A friend of ours once met six young women 
| going out to some Northern settlement of the Moravians 
| with a view to marriage.  <q> </q>?  he asked one.  <q> 
| </q>, she answered.  But we have heard of only one State 
| which realizes Plato's theory as to the equal participation of 
| woman in man's responsibilities as well as in his privileges, 
| and that is the kingdom of Dahomey.  If women were to 
| learn and govern like men, Plato argued, women must fight 
| like men, and the Amazons of Dahomey fight like very 
| terrible men indeed.
| But we have as yet heard of no military grievance on the 
| part of injured woman.  She has not yet discovered the 
| hardship of being deprived of a commission, or denied the 
| Victoria Cross.  No Miss Faithful has challenged woman's 
| right to glory by the creation of a corps of riflewomen.  
| Even Dr. Mary Walker, though she could boast of having 
| gone through the American war, went through it with a 
| scalpel, and not with a sword.  We are far from attributing 
| this peaceful attitude of modern woman, inferior though it 
| be to the Platonic ideal, to any undue physical sensitiveness 
| to danger, or to inability for deeds of daring; we attribute it 
| simply to a sense that there is a warfare which she is 
| discharging already, and
| <pb n="214">
| with the carrying on of which any more public exertions 
| would interfere.
| Woman alone keeps up the private family warfare which in 
| the earlier stages of society required all the energies of 
| man.  It is a field from which man has completely retired, 
| and which would be left wholly vacant were it not occupied 
| by woman.  The stir, the jostling, the squabbling of social 
| life, are all her own.  We owe it to her that the family 
| existence of England does not rot in mere inaction and 
| peace.  The guerilla warfare of house with house, the fierce 
| rivalry of social circle with social circle, the struggle for 
| precedence, the jealousies and envyings and rancors of 
| every day ~~ these are things which no man will take a 
| proper interest in, and which it is lucky that woman can 
| undertake for him.  The Platonic woman of to-day may not 
| march to the field or storm the breach, but she is unequalled 
| in out-manoeuvring a rival, in forcing an entrance into 
| society, in massacring an enemy's reputation, in carrying 
| off matrimonial spoil.  In war, then, as in education and the 
| affections, modern woman has developed the spirit without 
| copying the form of the Platonic ideal.  After all superficial 
| contrasts have been exhausted, she may still claim the 
| patronage of the philosopher of Academe.